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Schmidt Says YouTube 'Very Close' to Filtering System
cnetfeed writes "Google CEO says an automated system will soon be available to track pirated content and prevent it from being uploaded to video sharing site. The system was supposed to be rolled out as early as last October, and the long delay in brining the technology online has resulted in ill will from companies like NBC and Viacom. 'Network executives accused Google of stalling so YouTube could reap the big traffic that professionally-created shows generate. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google last month and accused Google of massive intentional copyright infringement. "Ah Viacom," [CEO Eric Schmidt] Schmidt said. "You're either doing business with them or being sued by them...we chose the former, but ended up the latter." Schmidt took the opportunity to poke fun at Microsoft's assertion that Google's pending acquisition of DoubleClick may be a threat to fair competition. Other companies, including Yahoo and AT&T have also asked regulators to review the transaction closely.'"
Once upon a time, you were the One True Search Engine. You wormed your way into our hearts with your blessed neutrality. You created cool toys, and you arbitrarily stood up for our rights when it suited your bottom line. You epitomized the .com boom.
You were like the Switzerland of the internet.
Whereas Doubleclick stood for all that was wrong with making money, you stood as the shining beacon of how to do it with class.
And now? Forget it. Screw this whole "Don't be evil" thing, where the hell is the next paycheck coming from?
I wonder if AltaVista is still a decent search engine...
John
End of Line
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
This is great! Google has automated a way to look at videos and determine if they match a video that's already in existence and under copyright! That means they've solved a hard AI problem. I hope some day they open source their solution.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Maybe Google can turn Doubleclick into a better company--who knows? I am not drawing any conclusions yet, I want to see what they do with it.
Google is working with Clear Channel?
I feel sick..
-- lol pwned
I wonder who's gonna take over when YouTube went the way of Napster.
Anyone know? I'd love to know which shares to buy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I ALWAYS brine online. It keeps the whole mess out of my kitchen!
and $1.6b down the "tube" when the visitors abandon the site because they cannot get their favourite show
there is no brand loyalty on the Internet when it comes to video sharing sites, he who has the content wins
and with all the popular shows gone because of this ID system why bother using YouTube when there are hundreds of video sharing sites (many not based in the US) that dont employ these tactics ? want freedom ? simply dont use US based services
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
"...and the long delay in brining the technology online has resulted in ill will from companies like NBC and Viacom
brining
-noun
1. water saturated or strongly impregnated with salt.
2. a salt and water solution for pickling.
3. the sea or ocean.
4. the water of the sea.
5. Chemistry. any saline solution.
-verb (used with object)
6. to treat with or steep in brine.
Mmmmmm pickled technology.....
-Tolerate my intolerance
swfdec finally makes a free flash codec that can handle YouTube and the next day they announce all the good content is going away!
Beep beep.
Good lord.
as if they werent the ones pulled stunts just a while ago, to be not a monopoly, but the sole controller of the greatest invention mankind ever had.
Read radical news here
How many millions(?) of hours of copyrighted material are there ? 24 Frames per second , potentially varying resolution, varying compression algorithms... ok they'll make some form of hash first pass but still with tens of thousands(?) of videos uploaded daily this is one major processing problem, hard to believe that computers can do it cheaper than humans ?
I may be completley wrong, but here's how I understand this so far..
If we can discount anything that looks at the actual audio or video content of the upload, and I believe we can since there just isn't an AI out there which can conclusively pick (for example) Captain Picard out of a video clip, then this must somehow use the textual metadata hooked to it. It'll have to sift through the tags and descriptions put there by the uploader, or possibly contextual data from sites that later embed the clip.
That would open some new cans of worms, though. First, it'd be easy to defeat, as we learned back when the old Napster suddenly didn't have anything by "Metallica," but there were tons of new songs from "Metallika," "Mettalicca," and "Metalligreed." Second, what if I record, say, a "C.S.I." parody? By rights I should be allowed to post it as such, will my file get flagged as lawsuit-bait and zapped because I used a copyrighted term in the description? What if I post an original film about firefighters that happens to use the word "heroes" in the title, which has nothing to do with the copyrighted TV series "Heroes?"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Q: How will they determine if it's fair use? A: Probably not at all.
This will be the death of youtube.
So when the title says,"Paris Hilton rides tractor doggy style!" and we get some video about a dog that can fetch mixed in with episodes of the Simpsons it will automatically pull the video?
Oh the wonders of technology...
[J]
There needs to be a real discussion about copyright and fair use by the feds, hopefully SCOTUS. I don't see how a low resolution clip of "needs more cowbell" from SNL constitutes piracy.
Similarly, I don't torrent movies because I know that's infringement but I have NO problem downloading ANY over the air TV show that I want to watch (lost, 24, etc) even though I know that in the current framework that is considered to be infringing.
Shouldn't Viacom be allowing YouTube to host the 'pirated' videos... I mean, with YouTube you KNOW who put it there and could easily find the perpetrator, plus YouTubes are at the most 10 minutes... if you were to pirate a show, it would take 3 YouTube videos, and a movie is 12 YouTube videos... And they are in the grainiest format possible. It surports the MAFIAA's outdated model by making a DVD or HD DVD more convienent than 12 YouTube videos. If people are using YouTube to 'pirate,' then it should be a hint that the MAFIAA's current model just doesn't work. (In fact, I watch more user-created works than anything that might be pirated)
If one can identify whether two streams are similar or not then people won't have to watch the same porn twice!!! Once again google gets close to geeks' hearts.
For most of the videos, the following could easily be done...
p rint
Copyright holder notices a video that they hold the copyright to. They tell Google. Google checks the claims made, etc. etc. and presumably finds it valid. They make a hash of the video. They check their site for any other videos that match that hash, and remove those as well. They check any future upload and see if it matches the hash - if it does, it doesn't post it.
That leaves people getting around that by re-encoding, etc.
So in comes fingerprinting:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=video+finger
It's not exactly rocket science. Re-encode it? Zap a few frames? Fingerprinting tech laughs in the face of that sort of thing. The only two effective means of fooling fingerprinting tech are:
1. mangle the video so it can't possibly be recognized. Unfortunately, this means nobody can watch it without a special de-mangling player.
2. find out how the fingerprinting tech works, and make sure that only in those spots where it checks the original video, there's a difference. Of course any fingerprinting tech worth it's $$,$$$ will allow a seed value to change things around, and google rotates this once a week or however often needed once they realize people are getting around things in that way - and punish those users appropriately.
Not saying I agree with them doing it - though I find it hilarious in a sad way that if a copyright holder says "X is mine, please take it offline", that Google will do so - but not on Y which is the exact same video, or Z which is the exact same video getting uploaded a day later - but those are the ways they -can- do it.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that Google build an AI system that magically determines whether the copyright of a video lays with a third party and by means of technological ESP determines that said copyright holder did not consent to the upload - and I certainly don't think that Google is claming that they are either.
If this affects music videos from the 80s, I guess I'll just have to stop going to Youtube. People with webcams just get tedious after a while. It's back to watching VH1 Classics on the weekends and fast forwarding through Musical Youth and Big Country.
This would seem to work against their claims of safe harbor under the DMCA, since a plaintiff could argue that with this system, Google should generally be aware of a particular instance of copyrighted material. Ignorance actually is an excuse in this case, and Google would have been much better off handling DMCA takedown requests rather than trying to resolve the problem themselves.
given that Google has a pretty strong defense in the DMCA safe harbor provisions.
In fact, experimenting with such technology is legally risky. Already according to TFA studios are accusing Google of "Dragging its feet" in deploying the technology, in other words knowingly letting pirated content to be posted for its own benefit. I still think they're probably within safe harbor, but they're skirting the edge.
Personally, I don't think Google needs to lift a finger in this direction. Safe harbor describes exactly what they have to do to be safe, and exactly the mechanisms the studios need to police their own content.
Either (a) Google is developing this technology simply because it can (possible) or (b) they have some other plan for YouTube that involves placating the studios (likely). I know people like to say that YouTube is, essentially, video blogging. There's no denying that that is an important application. But I'm thinking Google has ideas for other, commercial services built on top of, or integrated with it.
And then there is all that dark fiber they have been buying... Put them together and you have a company that looks like it is positioning itself to do to TV what TV did to the movies. Maybe.
Has there ever been a company more fun to speculate about than Google?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well...we could always just read a book. It seems the content owners don't understand the network economy.
OK, so the big studios are constantly pressuring Google to reign in their step-child video service.. When will YouTube/Google turn around and say, "Ok, when will the news (for lack of a better term) companies you own start paying us for broadcasting the clips they swipe from our site?". I can't count the number of times I have seen something on CNN, Fox, The Daily Show, or another reliable news source use a YouTube clip to spark up a story. Are they paying residuals to YouTube?
Sure that web-site has content.. But so does a garbage can!
there is a reason why we dont tolerate robot police, robotic judges, or robotic jurors.
robots are incapable of human perception, flexibility, or personal discression.
every filtering system throughout history has produced false positives, especially egregious ones in the computer field.
this leads to inflexible censorship and "great firewall of china" style repression of free speech.
they did this with google video, and lost out to youtube, and when they do it to youtube theyll lose out to the next guy.
congrats google, you've flushed your montra of "do no evil" down the proverbial johnny cash.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
ahh, the classic republican "but its private property" defense.
once a company reaches a certain size or market share they acquire powers rivalling government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards, otherwise there is no point to the constitution at all, because all the government has to do is privatize everything they can and then claim private property whenever people's civil liberties are violated.
this view does have support, it's been ruled illegal for businesses to place cameras in places like bathrooms, even in their own property. I say it's time to stop being hyppocritically selective about which amendments in the bill of rights are supposed to be protected from corporate greed (laziness counts as greed.. theyre trying to save money at the expense of the first amendment).
additionally, it's currently illegal to discriminate when providing a service. in this case theyre a video sharing site, and have no right to discriminate against video because it "might" lead to lawsuits in the same way gas stations have no right to discriminate against black people (who have a statistically higher criminal prosecution rate) because they "might" be armed robbers. they have to have positive proof before they takedown videos. the dmca notice and takedown system provides that, and it's viacom's responsibility to find and serve notice on the offending videos.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It is also video clips from TV shows, movies, etc. that get taken down. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Instead of filtering out their content, they should get a cut. Big Media is terrified of YouTube, because they misunderstand it's opportunity. YouTube is the newest form of broadcasting. It brings together everything to make a new kind of "TV" or "Radio" that is all-immersive. With Google behind it, YouTube potentially brings hyper-targeted advertising to the table.
Video, especially with modern desktop tools, is highly plastic. You learn to edit by cutting other's material and your own. Rappers and hip-hop do it, too. This is a proving ground for everyone to make media with. YouTube has a certain momentum behind it, and this is a fair-use issue in many instances (fan vids, AMVs, etc). Google is testing revenue sharing now with the Diet Coke & Mentos guys. YouTube will eventually have across-the-board revenue sharing with users and Big Media should co-opt this instead of getting into a urination match with the big G.
Users will continue to upload copywritten content. The technology is almost available to make everyone happy with this. For copywrite holders, this brings your content more "face time", more exposure, more people talking about it. This is a good thing for you.
One last point for all involved: the next form of advertising will be extensive product placement in Internet video, coupled with Adwords campaigns by same sponsors. It will probably be combined with locational services. This will be a huge driver for both specialty and mass market products.
Example, from 3-4 years ahead: you watch a video that combines Bruce Lee's famous nunchaku scene with segments from a content provider's instructional video. In the Adwords sidebar you get the click-thru for that video's site and to the film collection of Bruce Lee. Also, on a time/use/flat-fee basis, the copyright holder of the Bruce Lee material gets a cut. Decentralized as this could be, it gives a simple clearing-house for stock videos as well.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Now when politicians get caught saying things on camera and later say the exact opposite, the previous statement can be purged from YouTube permanently (and automatically).
Just what our cloak-and-dagger government needs.... more cloak.
As soon as that filter is in place, who really wants to watch videos of 10 year olds harassing their dog.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
From TFA:
"The long delay in brining the technology to market was due to the necessity of hiring thousands of new federal judges to rule on whether or not new uploads are fair use (parodies, short excerpts, etc) in real time. "
I'm impressed that I'll be able to use that Disney clip loaded to Google Video that is embedded in my blog on a completely different site for my college research paper on Disney's history of copyright violations.
Now, if they'd only make an automated function that rooted out all the chainletters and spam, I'd be a really happy camper.
To recoup lost income.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Well, here's what would happen...
The copyright holder tells YouTube that they believe that the copyright lays with them, and to please take it down. Google passes on this message to the person who uploaded the video. The person who uploaded the video then goes "uh, no - this is quite clearly a parody and is fully covered by blabla law" to YouTube. YouTube passes that on to the copyright holder, and they get to say that they either agree, or disagree.
If they disagree, YouTube would be in a unique position to hold a mediation between the two parties before any expensive lawsuits would evolve. This mediation may have to come at a small price, to be paid by the losing party. The small price should easily be payable by a private party should they 'lose', so that...
1. people who believe they are in their right get every opportunity to defend that right, and if they lose anyway, they're just out a small amount instead of a lot + a lot of time with lawyers/court(s).
2. people who know they're in the wrong can cede right away.
3. the copyright holder, should they 'win', still get to have the material taken down
4. the copyright holder, should they 'lose', will also just be out a small amount - but presuming they did this for every video like the one you referenced where they would clearly lose, that would still add up; thus, hopefully, preventing copyright holders from just issueing takedown notices to every video under the sun.
Should mediation fail (or either party refuses to partake*), -then- the two parties can still take it up with their lawyers/etc. and things just follow the natural course it has been for years. *not partaking in the mediation would reflect very badly on the person who refused to do so when in an actual court.. courts don't like having their time eaten up when it could've been solved through a mediator.. so in cases where there's no clear-cut verdict, expect the judge to judge in favor of the party that did want to go through with mediation.